Chapter 2: Chapter 2: An Oath

A few hours into sodas and potato chips and a cheesy kids’ movie (mom still wouldn’t allow PG-13), they began to get bored. The TV was switched off, and they began to talk about school, the new TV shows, drama, so-forth, when eventually they reached the most interesting subject on the news these days, Cindy’s spell. Alexis then surprised them both by producing a piece of printer paper with a simple set of words printed out, then explained that she intended, now that she was at the age of majority per the spell’s requirements, to change something small about herself this next full moon.

“I don’t know,” Luther said, “I wouldn’t touch it.”

“Oh come on,” Alexis teased, “you’ve seen what it can do, your dad’s ranted about it often enough on old people social media.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean it’s a good idea,” Luther said, “what if it can turn you into a demon? You know what the Bible says about witches.”

“Some people say Cindy’s the Antichrist,” John added.

Alexis rolled her eyes. “Come on, you’ve read Revelation, the antichrist is clearly a dude.”

“But it was made for those transgenders, she could be a dude and we wouldn’t even know it, especially with that spell,” Luther replied.

“Right, but if that’s so, then she’s a woman now,” Alexis explained.

“I guess, still doesn’t sit right with me,” John said.

“You’re telling me you wouldn’t do this? You wouldn’t have to make a big change, you could just like, change your nose size or something,” Alexis prodded.

“My nose is not that big,” John angrily snapped back.

Luther started laughing, then silenced himself when John glared at him, though it took him a few seconds to stop making stifled chuckling sounds.

“No one would know,” Alexis said after a few seconds of uncomfortable silence, “and you could stop any time before the last night, and if it was really an issue, it would only take until the next month to change back.”

“Right but what if I turn out to not be focused and end up being one of those beast-people with the big tails? Can’t exactly hide that,” Luther replied.

“Oh, would you want to? I think you’d look cute with a big ol’ poofy tail, just like Seamus our kitty-cat used to have,” Alexis replied, giggling.

Luther went red and flopped into his sleeping bag, clearly checked out for the night. John observed his friend in the bag, not totally convinced, before looking at Alexis and the paper still gripped in her hand, as if it were printed on a sheet of gold. Alexis noticed his interest, and crept over to him silently, careful not to disturb Luther.

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“If you want,” she whispered into his ear, “I can leave this with you and no one will ever know.”

“No one?” he whispered back, incredulously.

“Your secret is safe with me.”

John stared down at the sheet she offered him, plain printer paper though it was, with just a few supposedly-magical words written on it. He was still too scared to go at it alone, he decided. And that only meant one thing.

“Only if you do it to, as like, a dare,” he replied, “I’m not doing this alone.”

“You’re on, bro,” she said, shaking his hand in solemn agreement.

“Okay um,” he whispered, “we should talk more downstairs.”

She nodded and motioned for him to lead the way, tiptoeing out and closing the door behind them. They kept their voices down, not wanting their plot to be heard by the possibly-still-awake parents. John was sure they’d kill him if they found out, so he resolved that he was going to change something small–his height, reducing it by an inch. That way he could see tangibly if it worked, and switch back after a month without people saying more than ‘hey bro, are you shorter?’ and him simply lying about ‘slouching’ in return.

Meanwhile, Alexis came up with a much more devious plan. Her parents had denied her the ability to get a highlight at home, and there weren’t any shops in town that would do it, so she wanted to get it permanently dyed into her hair, that way even if her parents made her bleach it, it would just come back. John didn’t know how she kept coming up with these ideas, or why she had the constant need to stir up trouble, but if he was being honest, it made him glad he was there to rein her in sometimes.

He ended up talking her down to just doing it to a strip far beneath the rest of her incredibly long, straight hair, so she could test it out this month without consequences and go even further next month, maybe a full dye even. He hoped that the thrill-seeking part of her would get over it by then.

Eventually, the two mutually agreed it was time to finalize things, then Alexis remembered something very important–tonight was the full moon, and they’d both have to recite this every night before bed, being very intentional about what they wanted, visualizing their bodies with the changes. John tried to visualize his body, but he ended up focusing on just the height aspect, letting the rest become a blur. To be fair, he didn’t look at himself in the mirror and about the only time he had a sense of where the rest of him was was when he was dribbling a basketball, so the haziness was understandable. Besides, he figured, if he didn’t focus on anything else, just the height would change, and the rest would stay the same. He didn’t hate his body.

The recitation/memorization session, aided by years of bible memory verses in school and church, ended up going very smoothly. By the end, neither were messing up their words anymore, and seemed to be able to recite it by memory, with but a few slip-ups. They had been assured by some quick incognito web searching that incorrectly saying it would not activate some different spell. Once was sufficient, but they both wanted to be sure the other wouldn’t be left out if they did slip up saying it once.

Eventually, John’s mom did come down to politely inform them that ‘it’s too late to be practicing Latin’. Both blushed and apologized. She nodded sleepily and smiled, waving as she walked back to her room. Both kids looked at each other and tiptoed back to the room, relieved to find Luther actually asleep. Alexis got her sleeping bag and walked to the guest room, waving goodnight and tossing him the paper in a crumpled up ball, which he put in the far back of his desk drawer.

As he finally collapsed and wrapped up under his covers, trying to ignore the thoughts of what would come next in this crazy dare he had somehow found himself in, he pondered just quitting. But no, he knew that he’d basically made a covenant, and his youth group leader had been very insistent on not breaking those. ‘Let your yes be yes and your no be no,’ he'd said. Besides, John had already done the magic part sort of, it wasn’t like God was going to punish him any more than he already was. So, of course, he asked for pre-emptive forgiveness and went to sleep.

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